First: I wandered into Goose Bay Lumber haphazardly and found 4 pieces of 20' x1x4 finished Douglas Fir boards. All of them were straight, maybe three knots in the bunch, and relatively nice straight grain to boot. Just four, all four were good, I grabbed them. These will be my mast that powers my vessel. I had them cut to 15' 8", since the mast is just a smidge over 15' 6" tall, this gives me an inch of "oof" space. Also, they had a 15" planer, I had my daggerboard, and we fed it into the mouth of the machine. It spit it out a little thinner, and nice and smooth on one side. The planer was not a precision machine, and while I can lose 0.75mm, I'd rather do that by hand than take out a huge chunk or something. But it helped.
Second: I called my bro-in-law and he was home, with his 13" planer. I strapped my mast bits onto the roof of my sedan in a fashion that screamed "I will impale the person in front of me if you rear-end me" and roared up the interstate to the second planer. In short order I planed my rudder down to the requisite 22mm and it came out amazing. Then, away I planed my mast stock down to the 1/2" it needs to be. Back on the roof with a little less mass and a little more wobbliness and back to my garage where I trimmed the trailing edge of my blades and got them ready for shaping.
Here's my mast stock. Hmmmm Hmmm delicious stock.
So I need to shape the rudder, to make the rudder box, so I can install the rudder hardware to the boat, so I can finally glue down the rear seat. Then, daggerboard so I can glue down the centercase. Then, make the mast, make some spars, and then I can start finishing my boat. One day, one step, at a time.
Good job! Man, that must have been something driving that mast material around! I was a little nervous about 16' pieces on top of the Jeep (Grand Cherokee) - but had no problems.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the excellent pace!